A funny thing happened on way to drug awareness

Monday

Mar 1, 2010 at 12:01 AMMar 1, 2010 at 1:10 AM

Readers often comment that there should be more good news in the paper. While it’s true that there’s more than enough bad news to go around, on Mondays on the editorial page we will highlight some of the many good news stories that appear on our pages on a regular basis.

Editor’s note: Readers often comment that there should be more good news in the paper. While it’s true that there’s more than enough bad news to go around, on Mondays on the editorial page we will highlight some of the many good news stories that appear on our pages on a regular basis.

If nothing else, teenagers are renown for locking psychological and emotional doors between themselves and those they perceive as their arch-nemesis: grown-ups.

Parents, educators and others responsible for their well-being are often frustrated to learn that the keys that used to open those locks no longer do.

Luckily, John Morello has a key that works.

The Boston native’s youth, charisma and comedic skills gain him access others are denied. And he doesn’t squander it.

He uses it to deliver information that could save lives; information that would likely be ignored if it came from an “authority figure.”

Morello teaches – in ways so subtle as to be mistaking for entertainment – the dangers of drugs.

His one-man show, called “Dirt,” recently had students at Hanover High School laughing – and thinking – about the subject.

A series of monologues, it also deals with other important issues, such as sex and racism.

Despite its basis in comedy, tragedy is what inspires Morello to take his show to high schools across the country. He lost one brother to a drunken driver and another to a heroin overdose.

It’s odd – and for some possibly uncomfortable – to think about someone encouraging teenagers to laugh about a problem coursing so rampantly through this generation that it is now described as an epidemic; one that has killed more than 3,000 people in Massachusetts over the past seven years.

A recent study by the state Department of Public Health concluded that opiate overdose is now the leading cause of death in the state for adults under age 25.

But sometimes humor is the only agent that can penetrate teen defenses; defenses built on the notion that they are invulnerable and that others are using the guise of concern simply to oppress them.

So it’s OK that they’re laughing. That means they’re listening. And maybe that means they live.